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Sunday, 19 April 2015

This is interesting in that mere supposition has been blown out of all proportion. "Cannibals" and "Cannibalism" are the sexy words journalists love so why not push them when your work needs extra press?

Neanderthals, the now-extinct cousins of modern humans, mutilated and may even have devoured their dead, new research has found.

Analysis
of marks found on the bone fossils of two adults and a child
Neanderthal discovered in the Poitou-Charentes region of France show
evidence of cuts made shortly after death to separate limbs from the
body.

The
separated bones show “no evidence of cuts or traces of carnivores'
teeth” suggesting they were removed deliberately for either food or
funeral ceremony.

Garralda added: “They might have been rituals –
still in the 21st century these continue in certain parts of the world –
or for food – gastronomic cannibalism or due to need."

The bones were found in the Poitou-Charentes region of France

The team points out it is impossible to confirm
the procedure points to cannibalism because of the proliferation of
animal bones found at the site – mostly reindeer – which are also likely
to have been a food source.

But it’s not the first time Neanderthals have been suspected of committing cannibalism.

In 2010 the remains of a what is believed to have been a family group of Neanderthals were found in a cave in El Sidron, Spain.

Carles Lalueze-Fox who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, told LiveScience:
“There are many different markings in many different bones in all 12
individuals, including traditional cut marks to disarticulate bones and
remove muscle insertions, snapping and fracturing of long bones to
extract the marrow.”

That the remains were dated to 49,000 years
ago indicates the cannibals were other Neanderthals, “since modern
humans were not around at that time in Europe”, he added.

Known
as the Kostenki genome, the DNA contained evidence the man shared, as
with all people of Eurasia today, a small percentage of Neanderthal
genes, confirming previous findings which show a period when
Neanderthals and the first humans to leave Africa for Europe briefly
interbred.

Thursday, 16 April 2015

I keep telling people to arm themselves with FACTS in the anti-fox hunt debate.

My book, research started in 1977, was NOT aiming at any pro/anti stance but as I went through and studied the papers and books (1800-1990s) I found that it was NEVER EVER about pest control but sport pure and simple.

And people in the countryside were NEVER "traditionally pro-hunting" but often took hunts to court for crop damage and even killing pets/stock.

Had many many thousands of foxes not been imported into the UK "to keep the sport alive" then by the 19th century British foxes would have been extinct like the wolf, bear and lynx.

The safety of the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have
reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in
cosmic-ray collisions. Concerns about the safety of whatever may be
created in such high-energy particle collisions have been addressed for
many years. In the light of new experimental data and theoretical
understanding, the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) has updated a
review of the analysis made in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, a
group of independent scientists.

LSAG reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that
LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for
concern. Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times
over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies. The
LSAG report has been reviewed and endorsed by CERN’s Scientific Policy
Committee, a group of external scientists that advises CERN’s governing
body, its Council.

The following summarizes the main arguments given in the LSAG report.
Anyone interested in more details is encouraged to consult it directly,
and the technical scientific papers to which it refers.

Cosmic rays

The LHC, like other particle accelerators, recreates the natural phenomena of cosmic rays
under controlled laboratory conditions, enabling them to be studied in
more detail. Cosmic rays are particles produced in outer space, some of
which are accelerated to energies far exceeding those of the LHC. The
energy and the rate at which they reach the Earth’s atmosphere have been
measured in experiments for some 70 years. Over the past billions of
years, Nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about
a million LHC experiments – and the planet still exists. Astronomers
observe an enormous number of larger astronomical bodies throughout the
Universe, all of which are also struck by cosmic rays. The Universe as a
whole conducts more than 10 million million LHC-like experiments per
second. The possibility of any dangerous consequences contradicts what
astronomers see - stars and galaxies still exist.

Microscopic black holes

Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our
Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. They concentrate a
very large amount of matter in a very small space. Speculations about
microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the
collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable
to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much
heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.

According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by
Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to
be produced at the LHC. There are, however, some speculative theories
that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. All these
theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately.
Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and
to cause macroscopic effects.

Although theory predicts that microscopic black holes decay rapidly,
even hypothetical stable black holes can be shown to be harmless by
studying the consequences of their production by cosmic rays. Whilst
collisions at the LHC differ from cosmic-ray collisions with
astronomical bodies like the Earth in that new particles produced in LHC
collisions tend to move more slowly than those produced by cosmic rays,
one can still demonstrate their safety. The specific reasons for this
depend whether the black holes are electrically charged, or neutral.
Many stable black holes would be expected to be electrically charged,
since they are created by charged particles. In this case they would
interact with ordinary matter and be stopped while traversing the Earth
or Sun, whether produced by cosmic rays or the LHC. The fact that the
Earth and Sun are still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays
or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes. If
stable microscopic black holes had no electric charge, their
interactions with the Earth would be very weak. Those produced by cosmic
rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those
produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much
larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe.
Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as
neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The
continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules
out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

Strangelets

Strangelet is the term given to a hypothetical microscopic lump of
‘strange matter’ containing almost equal numbers of particles called up,
down and strange quarks. According to most theoretical work,
strangelets should change to ordinary matter within a thousand-millionth
of a second. But could strangelets coalesce with ordinary matter and
change it to strange matter? This question was first raised before the
start up of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, RHIC, in 2000 in the
United States. A study at the time showed that there was no cause for
concern, and RHIC has now run for eight years, searching for strangelets
without detecting any. At times, the LHC will run with beams of heavy
nuclei, just as RHIC does. The LHC’s beams will have more energy than
RHIC, but this makes it even less likely that strangelets could form. It
is difficult for strange matter to stick together in the high
temperatures produced by such colliders, rather as ice does not form in
hot water. In addition, quarks will be more dilute at the LHC than at
RHIC, making it more difficult to assemble strange matter. Strangelet
production at the LHC is therefore less likely than at RHIC, and
experience there has already validated the arguments that strangelets
cannot be produced.

Vacuum bubbles

There have been speculations that the Universe is not in its most
stable configuration, and that perturbations caused by the LHC could tip
it into a more stable state, called a vacuum bubble, in which we could
not exist. If the LHC could do this, then so could cosmic-ray
collisions. Since such vacuum bubbles have not been produced anywhere in
the visible Universe, they will not be made by the LHC.

Magnetic monopoles

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles with a single magnetic
charge, either a north pole or a south pole. Some speculative theories
suggest that, if they do exist, magnetic monopoles could cause protons
to decay. These theories also say that such monopoles would be too heavy
to be produced at the LHC. Nevertheless, if the magnetic monopoles were
light enough to appear at the LHC, cosmic rays striking the Earth’s
atmosphere would already be making them, and the Earth would very
effectively stop and trap them. The continued existence of the Earth and
other astronomical bodies therefore rules out dangerous proton-eating
magnetic monopoles light enough to be produced at the LHC.

Other aspects of LHC safety:

Concern has recently been expressed that a 'runaway fusion reaction'
might be created in the LHC carbon beam dump. The safety of the LHC beam
dump had previously been reviewed by the relevant regulatory
authorities of the CERN host states, France and Switzerland. The
specific concerns expressed more recently have been addressed in a technical memorandum
by Assmann et al. As they point out, fusion reactions can be maintained
only in material compressed by some external pressure, such as that
provided by gravity inside a star, a fission explosion in a
thermonuclear device, a magnetic field in a Tokamak, or by continuing
isotropic laser or particle beams in the case of inertial fusion. In the
case of the LHC beam dump, it is struck once by the beam coming from a
single direction. There is no countervailing pressure, so the dump
material is not compressed, and no fusion is possible.

Concern has been expressed that a 'runaway fusion reaction' might be
created in a nitrogen tank inside the LHC tunnel. There are no such
nitrogen tanks. Moreover, the arguments in the previous paragraph prove
that no fusion would be possible even if there were.

Finally, concern has also been expressed that the LHC beam might
somehow trigger a 'Bose-Nova' in the liquid helium used to cool the LHC
magnets. A study (link is external) by Fairbairn and McElrath has clearly shown there is no possibility of the LHC beam triggering a fusion reaction in helium.

We recall that 'Bose-Novae' are known to be related to chemical
reactions that release an infinitesimal amount of energy by nuclear
standards. We also recall that helium is one of the most stable elements
known, and that liquid helium has been used in many previous particle
accelerators without mishap. The facts that helium is chemically inert
and has no nuclear spin imply that no 'Bose-Nova' can be triggered in
the superfluid helium used in the LHC.

Comments on the papers by Giddings and Mangano, and by LSAG

The papers by Giddings and Mangano (link is external) and LSAG (link is external)
demonstrating the safety of the LHC have been studied, reviewed and
endorsed by leading experts from the CERN Member States, Japan, Russia
and the United States, working in astrophysics, cosmology, general
relativity, mathematics, particle physics and risk analysis, including
several Nobel Laureates in Physics. They all agree that the LHC is safe.

The paper (link is external) by Giddings and Mangano has been peer-reviewed by anonymous experts in astrophysics and particle physics and published (link is external)
in the professional scientific journal Physical Review D. The American
Physical Society chose to highlight this as one of the most significant
papers it has published recently, commissioning a commentary (link is external)
by Prof. Peskin from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory in
which he endorses its conclusions. The Executive Committee of the
Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society has
issued a statement (link is external) endorsing the LSAG report.

The conclusions of LSAG have also been endorsed (link is external)
by the Particle and Nuclear Physics Section (KET) of the German
Physical Society. A translation into German of the complete LSAG report
may be found on the KET website, as well as here. (A translation into French of the complete LSAG report is also available.)

Thus, the conclusion that LHC collisions are completely safe has been
endorsed by the three respected professional societies of physicists
that have reviewed it, which rank among the most highly respected
professional societies in the world.

World-renowned experts in astrophysics, cosmology, general
relativity, mathematics, particle physics and risk analysis, including
several Nobel Laureates in Physics, have also expressed clear individual
opinions that LHC collisions are not dangerous:

"To think that LHC particle collisions at high
energies can lead to dangerous black holes is rubbish. Such rumors were
spread by unqualified people seeking sensation or publicity."

"The operation of the LHC is safe, not only in the
old sense of that word, but in the more general sense that our most
qualified scientists have thoroughly considered and analyzed the risks
involved in the operation of the LHC. [Any concerns] are merely
hypothetical and speculative, and contradicted by much evidence and
scientific analysis."

"The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns
on. The LHC is absolutely safe. ... Collisions releasing greater energy
occur millions of times a day in the earth's atmosphere and nothing
terrible happens."

"Nature has already done this experiment. ... Cosmic
rays have hit the moon with more energy and have not produced a black
hole that has swallowed up the moon. The universe doesn't go around
popping off huge black holes."

Prof. Edward Kolb, Astrophysicist, University of Chicago

"I certainly have no worries at all about the
purported possibility of LHC producing microscopic black holes capable
of eating up the Earth. There is no scientific basis whatever for such
wild speculations."

"There is no risk [in LHC collisions, and] the LSAG report is excellent."

Prof. Lord Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society of London

"Those who have doubts about LHC safety should read
LSAG report where all possible risks were considered. We can be sure
that particle collisions at the LHC cannot lead to a catastrophic
consequences."

The overwhelming majority of physicists agree that microscopic black
holes would be unstable, as predicted by basic principles of quantum
mechanics. As discussed in the LSAG report (link is external),
if microscopic black holes can be produced by the collisions of quarks
and/or gluons inside protons, they must also be able to decay back into
quarks and/or gluons. Moreover, quantum mechanics predicts specifically
that they should decay via Hawking radiation.

Nevertheless, a few papers have suggested that microscopic black holes might be stable. The paper (link is external) by Giddings and Mangano and the LSAG report (link is external)
analyzed very conservatively the hypothetical case of stable
microscopic black holes and concluded that even in this case there would
be no conceivable danger. Another analysis (link is external)
with similar conclusions has been documented by Dr. Koch, Prof.
Bleicher and Prof. Stoecker of Frankfurt University and GSI, Darmstadt,
who conclude:

"We discussed the logically possible black hole evolution paths.
Then we discussed every single outcome of those paths and showed that
none of the physically sensible paths can lead to a black hole disaster
at the LHC."

Professor Roessler (who has a medical degree and was formerly a chaos
theorist in Tuebingen) also raised doubts on the existence of Hawking
radiation. His ideas have been refuted by Profs. Nicolai (Director at
the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics -
Albert-Einstein-Institut - in Potsdam) and Giulini, whose report (link is external) (see here for the English translation, and here
for further statements) point to his failure to understand general
relativity and the Schwarzschild metric, and his reliance on an
alternative theory of gravity that was disproven in 1915. Their verdict:

"[Roessler's] argument is not valid; the argument is not self-consistent."

The paper of Prof. Roessler has also been criticized by Prof. Bruhn of the Darmstadt University of Technology, who concludes (link is external) that:

"Roessler's misinterpretation of the Schwarzschild metric
[renders] his further considerations ... null and void. These are not
papers that could be taken into account when problems of black holes are
discussed."

I am sorry but Prof. Sykes seems to have issued one positive statement followed by another. Russian hominologists were devastated (and TV filmed it all for the fun human interest side of that documentary series.

I tried twice to contact Prof. Sykes but apparently "he does not take calls"....now we have this.

I just throw my hands up in confusion!

Sadly, the odd news snippet will not reverse public opinion that has been based on that TV series. Yeti -bear. Zana -just a woman. The whole subject -a crock of fantasy.
****************************************************************************

The myth of Bigfoot has titillated people over the centuries, with sightings recorded in the Himalayas and northwest America.

Now a leading geneticist claims to have found the best evidence that a
woman who lived in 19th century Russia could have been a yeti.

Professor Bryan Sykes of the University of Oxford believes that a
towering woman named Zana, had a strain of West African DNA that
belonged to a subspecies of modern humans.

Her resemblance has been described as that of a wild beast, and "'the
most frightening feature of which was her expression which was pure
animal", one Russian zoologist wrote in 1996 according to a report in
the Times.

The man who organised various eyewitness accounts of Zana wrote: "Her athletic power was enormous.
"She would outrun a horse and swim across the Moskva river, even when it rose in violent high tide.'"
Some have argued that she was a runaway Ottoman slave, but Professor Sykes says her "unparalleled DNA" refutes that theory.

Analysis of her DNA revealed that she was "100% African", but bore
little physical or genetic resemblance to any modern African group,
according to Sykes.

He believes her ancestors came out of Africa over 100,000 years ago and lived in the remote Caucasus for many generations.

Zana was eventually "tamed" by the nobleman who bought her as a
servant and kept her on his estate in Tkhina in the Republic of
Abkhazia, according to local accounts.

She was described as being incredibly muscular, slept outdoors and ran around naked until she died on the estate in 1890.

Some of the professor's colleagues doubt his previous findings –
which include a claim that an unknown species of bear might account for
yeti sightings in Bhutan.

Despite the lack of hard proof from the analysis of the alleged "yeti
hairs"', he says he has developed a strong sense that "something is out
there" after speaking to dozens of witnesses.

Professor Sykes could not say if the yeti, Bigfoot or the Russian
almas is the best candidate for a surviving race of human "apemen".

He said: 'Bigfoot has many more people trying to find it. But I
suppose either the yeti or the
alma/almasty, which live in inaccessible
and very thinly populated regions, is the most likely.'

Sykes claims to have made further
discoveries about Zana since he wrote the book, and says that he will
publish them in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Sunday, 5 April 2015

No. I do NOT believe any of these so called "British Sasquatch" encounters. Yes, there is plenty of food such as wild/water fowl, deer of many species, boar, rabbits in their millions and so on but this is all a modern myth in the UK.

I have files on the strange and weird going back centuries but even in rare and hard to find sources not a single mention of any hairy man-beasts in the UK.

Retired cook Deborah Hatswell told Cryptozoology News that she was
truanting school in 1982 when she and a friend had the face to face
encounter with the beast at around 2 p.m..

“We decided to skip the afternoon lessons and go and hide out in the
park till the 3.30 p.m. bell. There is an old mansion called Summerfield in the north of the park, huge golf course and lots of trees and bushes and places to hide,” she said.

Hatswell states they had been playing around the Buile Hill Park area
for about two hours when they decided to lay on the ground to take a
break.

“We were just being silly giggling and playing around, it was warm and sunny and a really nice day.”
Suddenly, she said, she noticed a “slight movement” on the bushes to
her right. Thinking it was a teacher about to put an end to their
truancy, she became worried.

“Or maybe a local lad messing about. In the split seconds it took the
bushes to part, I went from being worried to terrified. In my town,
there was no talk of bigfoot or monsters, although we do have the famous
haunted Ordsall hall, but thats about as strange as it gets, or so I
thought.”

The young girl’s worst nightmares reportedly materialized when she
caught a glimpse of the “thing” peeking at the pair through the green
vegetation.

“A huge ape-man type thing leant forward and just looked at me, from
about mid-chest I could see him and he was in my mind a monster,”
Hatswell recalls.

According to the woman, there were only about 8 feet between them and
the unidentified animal. She described it as a big-headed primate-like
creature without hair on its face.

“My father is a big strong man and he made my dad look tiny,” she
explained. “He looked like an ape version of us, his head was huge,
large jaw muscles, hair was very dark brown and reddish when the sun
caught it, he had eyes like ours but in proportion to his face, a
similar nose but flatter and lips and teeth like ours, his eyes were
dark and amber at the same time. He had very tanned leathery skin, no
hair on his face, except for his jaw and chin. I could see his
shoulders, top of his arms and a small amount of chest, no neck really,
he was completely covered in hair, I didn’t see ears as I was still
looking up at this point.”
As the purported beast curiously scanned the girls, Hatswell decided
it was time to get out of there. And she ran, as fast as she could,
until reaching her house.

“I reacted with fear and I’m ashamed to say I pushed my friend over
and took off running. As I looked back, she was up and running too, and
he just leant back into the greenery and within two steps, he was gone.”

For a while, Hatswell says she didn’t tell anyone about the incident .
She also blamed her friend for “talking her into skipping school”.

“We never really ever talked again after that,” she said.

But when she decided to come forward, Hatswell’s story wasn’t well received.

“I told my mum and she thought I’d just seen a homeless person, everybody thought I was just being dramatic.”

So, she says she began doing her own research. She read paranormal
books and studied similar cases from the United States. Then, she came
across the Patterson-Gimlin film.
“‘Patty’ looked very similar, but just not the same.”

Years went by and her experience still remained a mystery. And when
it looked as though Hatswell had finally given up, a TV show dug up the
cryptid memories.

” The Sykesville monster appears, it was so close to what I had seen
it took me right back,” she explains. “I was crying and shaking, and I
was 15 again, looking at him. At that point I decided I needed to put
this to bed once and for all.”

She figures contacting a British Bigfoot website would most likely help her decipher the decades-old encounter.

“But they didn’t want to know. They said it was ‘too close too town’.
I got out the maps and started to work out how he got there. I’m
finding green corridors in the country parks and off to the moors. I
started looking at old Woodwoose articles and finding people in the
comments who had had experiences,” says the retired cook.

The Woodwoose, also known as the Wodewose or the Wild Man, is a
mythical creature present in European literature from the Middle Ages.
Critics believe that inaccurate accounts of possible apes written by
explorers and travelers in that time period may have been responsible
for the creation of the myth.

And Hatswell, who was forced to quit her job due to an accident she
had nine years ago, has now become an investigator and, indirectly, a
paramount source of Bigfoot stories coming out of the United Kingdom.
She has collected hundreds of eyewitness accounts.

“I met most of my fellow team member this way too, most of whom have
had their own sighting and a need to understand like myself. We set up blogs and Facebook pages, expanding the net and finding more and more witnesses.”

And it appears that the hard work has finally paid off.

“This month, a lady from the area came forward and said she saw the
same thing in 1984, I have contacted her but as of yet have not received
a reply,” she said.

The Buile Hill Mansion stands behind the thick vegetation of the park in the 1860s. Credit: University of Salford. CC BY 2.0

Used as a military base during both world wars, the 87 acre park remains the largest of its kind in Salford.

In 2007, the local media announced
plans for the conversion of the 1827 Buile Hill Mansion to a Hilton
hotel. These plans reportedly came to an end three years later after the
the National Lottery refused to provide with the needed funding.

It is going to be interesting to see what follows on from this. Concentration of scanning gear aimed at a very specific point in space? Or, "Let's wait a few more years, see what they find before we all group together to do anything"?

Mysterious bursts of energy coming from space align in a mathematical
pattern, and so could be emanating from alien technology, according to
scientists.

Blitzars, which last only about a millisecond, have been detected by
telescopes since about 2001 and have been heard ten times since. And
nobody really knows where they come from, or why they happen.
But a new study has found that the bursts line up in a way that is not explained by existing physics, reports the New Scientist.

Scientists
tried to work out how far the bursts have travelled through space to
get to us, using “dispersion measures”. That looks at how the radiowaves
that are being sent get scattered as they travel through space — the
higher the dispersion measure, the further that radiowaves seem to have
been sent before they arrived.

All of the ten bursts that have
been detected so far have dispersion measures that line up as multiples
of a single number: 187.5. The chances of them doing so are 5 in 10,000,
the scientists behind the study claim.

John Learned, from the
University of Hawaii in Manoa, led the study with Michael Hippke from
the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany. Learned
said that the line-up was “very, very hard to explain”.

There are
two theories for why the coincidence is happening, according to the
researchers. The first proposes that each of the bursts were sent from
regularly spaced intervals: five sources, at equally spaced distances
from the Earth. But the more likely one says that they probably came
from somewhere much closer, like in the Milky Way, but are being
mysteriously sent with a delay that matches up to the strange pattern.

There is little reason for the bursts to line up in this way if they
are being sent by natural bodies, the scientists said. Some stars have
sent out bursts of radio waves, but without the power or regular pattern
that has been found in the fast radio bursts. However, it may be that
there is some astrophysics that scientists are yet to understand that
has been driving the timing.

It could also be that the signals are
not coming from space at all, but form much closer. The messages could
be coming from a secret satellite that is hiding its messages so that
they appear to come from much deeper in space.

But the scientists
conclude that if none of the other explanations work out, “An artificial
source (human or non-human) must be considered”.

While scientists
have long considered that the bursts could be messages from aliens, the
new finding could lend extra credence to that theory. Researchers have
been attempting to work out whether a message is encoded in the bursts —
and it seems they might now have found one.